On Sunday, after a day spent thrift shopping, delivering
books to Little Libraries,
getting ice cream at Tastee-Twist, napping, and
having dinner at Classic Slice, Lisa and I went to see No Hard Feelings at
the Ridge Cinema. YaYa and her boyfriend joined us both for dinner and the
flick.
No Hard Feelings is a comedy about an Uber driver, played by
Jennifer Lawrence, who loses her car just as she is facing foreclosure for back
property taxes. To get back on the road, and save her home, she answers a
personal ad from a rich couple who want her to “date” their son, played by Andrew
Barth Feldman, in exchange for a free car. That’s “date” in quotes, as in take
his virginity. Unfortunately for her the socially awkward 18-year-old is no
easy catch, and time is running out.
I liked the film, and there were parts where I laughed my
butt off. But when you release multiple trailers (just a cursory Google search showed
me 5 minutes of “official” material) you’re showing your audience 10% of your final 90 minute product, and presumably some of the best of it.
There were parts of the film that would have been hysterical, had I not seen it
six or seven times before.
That’s not the film’s fault, but it definitely impacts your
viewing.
A negative that was the fault of the filmmakers, and I can’t
believe I’m saying this, because it’s so counterintuitive: the characters were
too 3-dimensional.
This was a raunchy , laugh out loud, don’t-worry-about-the
plot-holes kind of flick and what did they do?
They developed rich, emotional backstories and complex motivations for the two
lead characters. That’s super swell as an assignment in a screenwriting class,
but was it needed here, with this material? I think this a case where keeping the
characters firmly in their lane would have better served the comedy.
Don’t mind me though, I’m a grouch. I still rate this a solid
B. Go see it.
